I give full credit of the world and characters to J.K. Rowling, who deserves to earn an honest buck, if not the Pulitzer prize. I'm not making any money off of it and have little enough to my name, anyway, so suing me is rather pointless. The title of this story is taken from a line in J.D. Salinger's short story, "Zooey." Forgive me, Mr. Salinger, if using your words somehow pervert their beauty.
This first chapter is rather short, I'm afraid. It's more of a lead in, I suppose. Enjoy, or don't. Either way, please let me know how I am doing. I will warn you: I savor my writing, so the going will be slow. Also, I welcome flames of any sort – heat and pressure and time make diamonds out of unrefined coal.
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Some nights, it didn't rain. The air would be clean and clear and crisp, and stars would tack the inky night into place with their sharp brilliance. On such translucent nights, the moon would caress the grass tenderly, rendering the hills sweetly silver. Occasionally a cloud, backlit as if made of spun tinsel, would flutter across the silkscreen sky and, for a moment, obscure the pale moon as it gazed down on a manor house that seemed to be fashioned of the same matter as the glittering atmosphere. Tonight was one of those nights, and this moment was such that so-called spun tinsel absorbed the music of the spheres.
Eyes observing the transition from moonlit magic to mundane darkness blinked rapidly, surfaces stinging from either lack or foreboding abundance of moisture. It was late for the watcher to be still awake, though the droop in her expression was not due to fatigue. Her arms crossed over the thin nightgown she wore, designed more to impress than to keep the owner warm during the night. A gown like that, one would assume, would only be worn in the presence of another warm body, anyway. Likely, also, the gown would not be worn long. The best of intentions, however, can be swayed.
Plain, comfortable, warm nightgowns were such luxuries (for she did count them as luxuries) that this woman did not own. Her wardrobe's function was to tantalize, to lure, to excite; quilted fabrics and other such protections from the elements merely took up space and failed to please the purse-holder, who enjoyed more thoroughly the so-called pleasures of thin satin, remote silks, and insubstantial lace. The shivering pawn did not complain; it was not her place.
"Her place". A shadow flickered over her mind as she thought the words. Years before, she had never seen those two words together in such an acrimonious juxtaposition. The words, if uttered innocently, could mean something exciting, such as "her place in the city", meaning a single's flat in downtown London. Or, "her place in the country", to use more soothing imagery. "Her place" now, though, meant nothing but gliding about in silks and simpering smiles, participating in society as the medal on someone's shoulder. Someone who had, before, been thought as an ally.
Betrayal was something she had ceased to feel. Acceptance of her role had become daily life. The love she had felt for the chains that now bound her, however, still bloomed painful and red, a bullet wound in her breast. How could she rebel against her beloved? How could she take for granted, take for nothing, the life he had handed her as a reward for her services rendered? This life, she forced her self to remember, was a privilege. The ring on her finger, thick with gold and precious gems, had been accepted freely, gladly, with a surge of love and lust and hope and pleasure. Three of the four had subsided, but the last left was the most painful, still growing parasitically in her soul.
Conditional morals, the watcher mused, seemed to crop up at every corner. Because of this, that didn't matter; because of that, this was perfectly acceptable. What had been taboo to her headstrong spirit now seemed almost comfortable now, where up was down and down was the only place she was going. Never before did she think that being arm candy, a trophy, an ornament, would constitute as "duty" in her honed and polished mind.
Honed and polished. The only thing that was honed and polished now, she thought bitterly, were her nails: buffed and painted and filed into pleasing shapes. The watcher turned her eyes now to the chips of hot ice on the ends of her fingers, hot like her heart and ice like the floorboards underneath her tender, useless feet. The muscles in her legs were more conditioned to wearing skyscraper shoes than fleeing from (or toward) danger, as they had been years before. Pedestals were pretty, but any attempt to come down from them shattered their charges like ice sculptures on the marble that statues were made of.
If it weren't for the library, she would have gone crazy.
Now, however, she felt a shiver of lonesomeness as a fragrant chill dusted her spine from the window that opened onto the garden. There, roses lay dormant under the moon, waiting for the sun to kiss their buds and unfurl their petals. The watcher felt her legs taking her back down the hall to the opulent room she shared with her love, but not lover, her jailer, but not jail. Her footsteps did not wake the sleeper, who lay tousled and vulnerable for just a few hours, before that dark hair was arranged carefully as the bouquets in the hall, before the expression changed from sleep-flushed innocence to smooth economy. She liked him best like this – sweet and untouched by the cares of the corporeal world. A gentle smile bloomed across her lips, checked at the corners by bittersweet barbs. It was only when he woke that she really believed it was all real; that she had really trapped herself into a world that wasn't a fairytale, that didn't have a happily ever after tacked on after the dream wedding. She could almost pretend that she had that when he was asleep and beautiful, or when, occasionally, something would catch him off guard and he would smile like he used to. Most of his waking hours, however, were spent much like David standing in Florence – remote, smooth, poised. Time can do much to a man; it can do worse to a boy.
Hermione Jane Potter slid between the sheets and draped her velvety arms around her young husband, melting into his childlike warmth and pretending that he was the man she had married, and she the woman who married him.
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Hello and welcome to my, for lack of better word, fanfiction. To be perfectly honest, I don't know how I came to write fanfiction about a series that I hardly enjoyed. You heard me right, folks – I don't like the Harry Potter books. Mostly, I suppose, the style in which it is written and most of the protagonists don't agree with me. However, when I began reading things other, more talented (in my opinion) authors had written using the same world and characters, I was hooked. The idea is in the right place – it just takes talent, vision, and ingenuity to bring it to life. Now it tantalizes me to see if I can do something with this, and as it is the individual light each new author casts on the idea that I like most, many of my characters will be out of character to the devoted reader. I will do my absolute best to get the facts right – the birthdates, the middle names (I researched enough to know that Hermione's middle name is, according to J.K. Rowling herself, Jane – keep that in mind, ye who profess to give the girl anything fancier), the gender of such characters such as Blaise Zabini (who is, in fact, male) – as perversion of facts make me balk from the most beautiful of fictions, but the personalities I shape within the husks of the characters is the purpose of this entire thing.
With that little disclaimer in mind, please leave a review if you are moved to, and let me know if I am horrid, fantastic, or even mediocre. I thrive on criticism of all kinds, and I'm not afraid of insults. I kiss the feet of those more talented, of which there are many, especially if they share their trade secrets with me (even if their trade secrets are accompanied with professions of hate and loathing).